Psychology 3051 Psychology 305B: Theories of Personality Lecture 14.

Psychology 305 1

Psychology 305B: Theories of Personality

Lecture 14

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Lecture 14

Questions That Will Be Answered In Today’s Lecture

Neoanalytic Perspective on Personality, continued

9. According to attachment theory, what are the 4 infant attachment styles?

10. How are attachment styles assessed in adults?

11. What are the major correlates of attachment styles?

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Learning Perspective on Personality

1. What are (a) behaviourism, (b) classical conditioning, and (c) operant conditioning?

2. Can personality development be explained by the processes of classical conditioning and operant conditioning?

3. What is Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?

4. What is Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?

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According to attachment theory, what are the 4

infant attachment styles?

• Research on attachment has been extremely prolific over the last 15 years.

• Contemporary research on attachment grew out of the work of John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst from England, and Mary Ainsworth, a professor at the University of Toronto.

• Ainsworth developed the “strange situation” procedure to assess infant attachment.

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• The strange situation procedure (20 minutes in duration):

The parent and child enter the lab, which is set up as a comfortable living room.

The parent sits down and the child is allowed to explore the room.

After a few minutes, an unfamiliar but friendly adult enters the room.

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The parent exits the room, leaving the child alone with the stranger.

After a few minutes, the parent returns to the room and the stranger leaves.

The parent remains in the room with the child for several more minutes, as the child’s reaction is

videotaped.

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• Using this procedure, Ainsworth and her colleagues (1972, 1979) identified 3 infant attachment styles:

1. The secure attachment style (66% of infants).

2. The avoidant attachment style (20% of infants).

3. The ambivalent attachment style (14% of infants).

• More recent research (e.g., Main & Hesse, 1990) has provided evidence for a fourth attachment

style: The disorganized attachment style.

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• Research suggests that infants with a secure attachment style have parents who are responsive, affectionate, and concerned with the stimulation of their babies. In contrast, infants in the other attachment groups appear to have parents who are

unresponsive and less engaged with their babies.

• In general, infants with a disorganized attachment style have been exposed to a chaotic and abusive environment.

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How are attachment styles assessed in adults?

• Bowlby theorized that infant relationships serve as prototypes, producing “internal working models” for later adult relationships.

• Bowlby described internal working models a unconscious expectations about relationships. More

recent theorists (e.g., Bartholomew & Shaver, 1998) have described them as cognitive/affective schemas or representations of the self in relation to close others. The schemas are thought to influence expectations, emotions, defenses, and relational behaviour.

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• Consistent with Bowlby’s theory that infant relationships produce internal working models for later adult

relationships, research has found:

(a) a positive correlation between parent-infant attachment style and adult attachment style.

(b) for most people, attachment classifications in infancy correspond to attachment classifications in adulthood.

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• Several methods have been developed to assess the attachment styles of adults:

1. Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985)

A 60 – 90 minute semi-structured interview.

Assesses secure, preoccupied, dismissing, and disoriented attachment styles. These 4 adult attachment styles correspond to the secure, ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized infant attachment styles, respectively.

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Contains 20 questions. Examples:

1.  “I'd like you to choose five adjectives that reflect your childhood relationship with your mother. This might take some time, and then I'm going to ask you why you chose them.” (Repeated for father)

2.  “To which parent did you feel closest and why? Why isn't there this feeling with the other parent?”

3.  “When you were upset as a child, what would you do?”

4.  “What is the first time you remember being separated from your parents? How did you and they respond?”

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2. Adult Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ; Hazan & Shaver, 1987)

Assesses secure, ambivalent, and avoidant attachment styles.

Scoring the interview involves assessing the coherence of the respondent’s narrative across the 20 questions.

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Contains brief multi-sentence descriptions of each of the 3 attachment styles. The descriptions are

extrapolations of the three infant patterns summarized by Ainsworth et al. (1978).

Respondents are asked to think about their experiences in romantic love relationships and select

the description that best describes how they feel in romantic relationships (a categorical response).

See questionnaire administered in class.

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Your “AAQ”

Description A: Avoidant attachment style

Description B:

Description C:

Secure attachment style

Ambivalent attachment style

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3. Relationship Questionnaire (RQ; Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991)

Assesses secure, preoccupied, fearful, and dismissing attachment styles.

Bartholomew argued that Hazan and Shaver’s measure conflated two theoretically distinct forms of avoidance—fearful-avoidance and dismissing-avoidance.

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According to Bartholomew, fearful-avoidant and dismissing-avoidant individuals differ in their self-views.

This is exemplified in Bartholomew’s 2-dimensional model of attachment:

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MODEL OF SELF

MODEL OF OTHER

Positive

Positive

Negative

Negative

SECURE

FEARFULPREOCCUPIED

DISMISSING

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Thus, according to this model, those who are fearful adopt an avoidant orientation to prevent being hurt or rejected by partners. In contrast, those who are dismissing adopt an avoidant orientation to maintain a defensive sense of self-reliance and independence.

Similar to Hazan and Shaver’s (1987) measure, the RQ contains brief multi-sentence descriptions of each of the 4 attachment styles.

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Respondents are asked to think about the way they generally are in close relationships and:

(a) select the description that best corresponds to their general relationship style (a categorical response).

(b) use a 7-point scale to rate each description for the extent to which it corresponds to their general relationship style (4 continuous responses).

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Descriptions included in the RQ:

“It is easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or having others not accept me.” (Secure; 47% of university students)

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“I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.”(Preoccupied; 14% of university students)

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“I am uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely, or to depend on them. I worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.” (Fearful; 21% of university students)

“I am comfortable without close emotional relationships. It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.” (Dismissing; 18% of university students)

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4. Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994)

Like the RQ, the RSQ assesses secure, preoccupied, fearful, and dismissing attachment styles.

However, the RSQ contains short statements drawn from several attachment measures, including

Hazan and Shaver's (1987) attachment measure and Bartholomew and Horowitz's (1991) RQ.

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Respondents use a 5-point scale to rate the extent to which each statement describes their feelings about close relationships.

Scores for each attachment style are derived by taking the mean of the items representing each attachment prototype.

See questionnaire administered in class.

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Your “RSQ”

Score 1:

Score 2:

Score 3:

Score 4:

Secure attachment score

Preoccupied attachment score

Fearful attachment score

Dismissing attachment score

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What are the major correlates of attachment styles?

• Research has revealed a number of associations between attachment styles and relationship

outcomes, emotion regulation, and personality.

• In contrast to individuals who have an insecure attachment style (i.e., ambivalent, preoccupied, avoidant, fearful, dismissing, disoriented), individuals who have a secure attachment style:

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are more satisfied in their relationships; their relationships are characterized by greater longevity,

trust, commitment, and interdependence than those of insecurely attached individuals (e.g., Keelan,

Dion, & Dion, 1994).

are more likely to seek support from their partners when distressed and are more likely to provide

support to distressed partners (e.g., Fraley & Shaver, 1998).

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are more likely to use conflict-resolution strategies involving compromise and integration in their

relationships (e.g., Pistole,1989).

are less likely to infer hostile and rejecting intentions in ambiguous behaviour displayed by a partner (e.g., Collins, 1996).

have relatively high levels of self-esteem (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991).

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are less likely to experience depression (avoidant individuals report the highest levels of depression; e.g., Hankin et al., 2005).

are less likely to drink alcohol when coping with stress (e.g., Brennan & Shaver, 1995).

experience greater satisfaction with work (e.g., Vasquez, Durik, & Hyde, 2002)

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are less likely to be involved in reciprocally aggressive romantic relationships or engage in spousal abuse (the highest incidence of spousal assault has been found among preoccupied and fearful men; Dutton et al., 1994)

are relatively low in neuroticism, high in agreeableness, and high in extraversion (preoccupied

individuals tend to be highest in neuroticism, whereas avoidant individuals tend to be lowest in

agreeableness and extraversion; e.g., Shaver & Brennan, 1992).

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Learning Perspective: What are (a) behaviourism,

(b) classical conditioning, and (c) operant conditioning?

• There are 3 interrelated principles associated with the behaviourist view on personality:

1. Personality is determined by environmental factors.

Consistent with this view, John Watson, the founder of behaviourism, maintained that a newborn baby is a tabula rasa (i.e., blank slate) ready to be written on by experience with the environment.

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Watson (1930) wrote:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist … and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents … tendencies, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”

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Similarly, Skinner (1983), one of the most famous behaviourist to date, wrote:

“I do not believe that my life shows a type of personality à la Freud, an archetypal pattern à la Jung, or a schedule of development à la Erikson. There have been a few abiding themes, but they can be traced to environmental sources … [not to] … traits of character. They became a part of my life as I lived it; they were not there at the beginning to determine its course.”

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2. Personality is the sum of observable behaviour.

Thus, according to the behaviourist tradition, personality does not reflect needs, motives, emotions, cognitions, instincts, unconscious or conscious experiences, or anything else that cannot be directly observed.

Indeed, Watson believed personality is merely the end product of our habit systems. Moreover, he maintained the personality is largely fixed by the age of 30 because, at this point, our habit patterns are set.

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3. Observation of overt behaviour is the only method by which to assess personality.

Watson (1913) wrote:

“Psychology as the behaviourist views it is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviour. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.”

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• Behaviourists have suggested that there are 2 distinctlearning processes that determine behaviour and, thus, personality:

1. Classical Conditioning

Learning that occurs by repeatedly pairing a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that produces a reflexive response.

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Unconditioned stimulus (US): The stimulus that produces the reflexive response.

Unconditioned response (UR): The reflex that occurs automatically in response to the US.

Conditioned stimulus (CS): The neutral stimulus that gradually acquires the ability to produce the reflexive response after repeatedly being paired with the US.

Conditioned response (CR): The reflexive response that gradually occurs in response to the CS.

Basic terminology:

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US URReflexive

CS CRLearned

Repeatedly paired

Highly similar

Basic process:

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Example of classical conditioning: In experiments with dogs, Pavlov repeatedly paired the presentation of food with the ringing of a bell. He found that, after several pairings, the bell was able to induce salivation in the dogs in the absence of any food.

What are the US, UR, CS, and CR in Pavlov’s experiments?

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Food Salivation

Reflexive

Ringing of Bell

SalivationLearned

Repeatedly paired

Highly similar

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2. Operant Conditioning

Learning that occurs through the reinforcement of a behaviour.

There are 2 types of reinforcement.

(a) Positive reinforcement (PR): Involves the introduction of a desired stimulus following a behaviour.

Examples: Praise, social recognition, physical affection, food, money.

PR increases the probability that a behaviour will be repeated.

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(b) Negative reinforcement (NR): Involves the reduction or termination of an aversive stimulus following a behaviour.

Examples: Discontinuation of the criticism of an overbearing boss after writing a good report, discontinuation of the negative comments of a loved one after weight loss.

Like PR, NR increases the probability that a behaviour will be repeated.

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Note that NR should not be confused with punishment.

Punishment: Involves the introduction of an aversive stimulus after a behaviour.

Examples: Spankings, time-outs, groundings.

In contrast to PR and NR, punishment decreases the probability that a behaviour will be repeated.

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Example of operant conditioning: In experiments with pigeons, Skinner placed the birds in a “Skinner box” containing a lever and a chute for the delivery of food. As the birds learned that pressing the lever resulted in the delivery of food, the rate at which they pressed the lever gradually increased until, eventually, they did little else.

Is this an example of PR or NR?

What is the reinforcement in these experiments?

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Can personality development be explained by the processes

of classical conditioning and operant conditioning?

• Early behaviourists argued that personality is merely the constellation of learned behaviours that are

acquired early in development through the processes of classical conditioning and operant conditioning.

• Accordingly, this view maintained that personality is determined by environmental factors.

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• Contemporary learning theorists, however, have argued that this view is flawed because it discounts drives, needs, emotions, cognitions, instincts, and other

phenomena that reflect the internal state of the individual.

• Indeed, some early learning theorists (e.g., Skinner) suggested that the term “personality” is superfluous because overt behaviour can be completely understood in terms of responses to environmental factors.

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• Collectively, the theories that contemporary learning theorists have proposed are referred to as social-

cognitive learning theories.

• Accordingly, contemporary learning theorists have elaborated upon the conditioning processes

emphasized by early behaviourists, placing greater emphasis on the mental processes of the individual and

the social aspects of learning.

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What is Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning

theory of personality?

• Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory emphasizes 5 concepts:

1. Drive

A motivational state that creates a readiness to respond and propels behaviour.

May be induced by internal events (e.g., hunger) or external events (e.g., intense cold).

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2. Cue

A stimulus that has the ability to elicit behaviour if accompanied by a drive that requires expression; indicates what action should be taken at a given

time.

Examples of common cues:

Noon lunch bell.

A restaurant sign.

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3. Response

A behaviour that is expressed in response to a cue and is aimed at eliminating a drive.

A behavioural response may be overt or covert. An overt behavioural response immediately reduces or eliminates a drive. In contrast, a covert behavioural response involves devising a plan that will ultimately reduce or eliminate a drive.

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4. Reinforcement

The positive consequences that follow a response (i.e., drive reduction).

5. Habit Hierarchy

Draws together the concepts of drive, cue, response, and reinforcement.

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Is a hierarchy of possible responses that an individual may exhibit when exposed to a cue in the

presence of a drive. The responses vary in the probability of their occurrence.

Drive + Cue

R1

R2

R3

R4

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R1 is referred to as the dominant response because it is the most likely response to be made. It is the response that has been most successful in bringing about drive reduction (i.e., reinforcement) in the past.

However, if R1 is not successful in accomplishing drive reduction on any given occasion, a change in the order of responses in the habit hierarchy may occur.

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Dollard and Miller maintained that learning occurs only when R1 fails and there is a change in the order of responses in the habit hierarchy.

According to Dollard and Miller’s theory, each person has unique habit hierarchies, and these unique habit hierarchies account for individual differences in

personality.

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What is Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory

• One of the most influential social-cognitive learning theories today was proposed by Albert Bandura.

• Bandura’s theory of personality emphasizes 3 broad concepts not recognized by early learning theorists:

of personality?

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1. Observational Learning

Refers to learning through the observation of models.

Bandura maintained that observational learningaccounts for our ability to learn both simple and complicated behaviours.

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Moreover, Bandura maintained that observational learning (a) is more efficient than learning through direct experience, (b) is the method by which most of our learning is accomplished, and (c) has evolved among humans because it enhances the probability of survival. With respect to these points, Bandura

wrote:

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“If human behaviour depended solely on personally experienced consequences, most people would not survive the hazards of early development. Of those who managed to outlive their mistakes, each would have to rediscover, through tiresome trial and error, what works and what fails in everyday transactions with their environment. Fortunately, people are spared many hazards and much tedium by their capacity to benefit from the experiences of others.” (Bandura, 1986)

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Substantial evidence has accumulated to support the notion of observational learning.

E.g., Bandura, Ross, & Ross (1961)

• Participants: Preschool-aged children.

• Experimental condition: One group of children observed an adult playing aggressively with an inflatable Bobo doll. The adult model exhibited four

aggressive behaviours, each accompanied by a distinct verbalization.

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• Control condition: Another group of children did not observe an adult playing aggressively with the Bobo doll.

• Results: Children in the experimental condition were much more aggressive towards the Bobo doll than children in the control condition. Moreover, the

children in the experimental condition tended to mimic the behaviour of the adult model to which they had been exposed.

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63

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Observational learning does not require any type of reinforcement to occur in order for the behaviour to be learned. However, when reinforcement does occur, it facilitates learning.

Bandura and other social-cognitive learning theorists distinguish between 4 types of reinforcement:

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(a) Extrinsic (Social) Reinforcement

• Reinforcement that is arbitrary or socially determined rather than the natural outcome of a behaviour.

• Examples: A medal received for athletic performance, an “A” on a term paper.

• Particularly important in early development.

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(b) Intrinsic Reinforcement

• Reinforcement that is the natural outcome of a behaviour.

• Examples: The relief of muscle fatigue following a series of relaxation exercises (a natural

physiological outcome), the positive affectassociated with mastering a piece of music (a natural emotional outcome).

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(c) Vicarious Reinforcement

• Reinforcement that is given to a model following a behaviour.

• Examples: A child who observes her sister receive praise for cleaning her room; a boy who observes his teammate receive a medal for successfully

completing a track and field event.

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(d) Self-Reinforcement

• Reinforcement that one gives to oneself for behaving in accordance with one’s own standards of conduct.

• Examples: Rewarding oneself with a chocolate sundae after having received an “A” on an exam, the self-approval one experiences after having restrained oneself from engaging in an inappropriate

or “amoral” action.

• Bandura believed that self-reinforcement is the primary means by which adults regulate their own behaviour.

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Neoanalytic Perspective on Personality, continued

9. According to attachment theory, what are the 4 infant attachment styles?

10. How are attachment styles assessed in adults?

11. What are the major correlates of attachment styles?

Questions That Were Answered In Today’s Lecture

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Learning Perspective on Personality

1. What are (a) behaviourism, (b) classical conditioning, and (c) operant conditioning?

2. Can personality development be explained by the processes of classical conditioning and operant conditioning?

3. What is Dollard and Miller’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?

4. What is Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory of personality?